Facebook announced today that it has launched a major update to its Android SDK, bringing Share Dialog and support for the Object API to the operating system.
“The Share Dialog offers a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing to significantly enhance people’s sharing experiences from your app,” says Facebook’s Chris Lang. “People now have the option to share activity from your apps without needing to login to Facebook first, eliminating up to 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog. With just one line of code, you can enable people to start sharing in an engaging way that lets them tag friends and share where they are. In addition, the Share Dialog includes support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories.”
Documentation for Share Dialog on Android can be found here.
The Object API lets developers directly create Open Graph objects, so they no longer need to host webpages with Open Graph tags. More on this here.
Facebook is also launching (in beta) the ability to publish and measure app events for Android apps.
“Previous versions of the SDK allowed developers and advertisers to measure installs driven from our mobile app install ads product,” Lang explains. “With app events, you can now also measure the aggregate number of times a predefined action was taken within your app, such as ‘add to cart’ in a commerce app, ‘level achieved’ in a game, or other custom events that help you understand the engagement and ROI coming from your mobile ads on Facebook. Over the next several months, we will be working on improving our optimization and insights and developing new features that will further leverage app events.”
They’re also launching App User ID for custom audiences, which lets developers reach people who have taken specific actions in the app (like installs or purchases) by defining an App User ID, and uploading the list in Facebook’s ad tool as a custom audience.
Finally, they’ve updated the Facebook Login UI, saying that it converts at a higher rate in tests. The Android Dev Center has also been updated.
According to the company, 73% of the top 100 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook. Facebook has over 800 million mobile users.